Punjab braces for high octane panchayat elections

41-amarinder-singh Punjab Chief Minister Amarinder Singh

The crowds at the traditional three-day Jor Mela at Fatehgarh Sahib near Chandigarh seemed to be enjoying themselves, yet in a strange hurry to return to their villages. The reason? The panchayat elections, which are of great significance for rural India, are due to be held on December 30. In addition, these grassroots elections have rarely witnessed such aggressive campaigns as they are seeing now.

The reason could well be the fact that these are the first panchayat elections since the Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) ceded the state to the Congress. The SAD also charged the Congress with misuse of power, and getting the nomination papers of its candidates rejected at a number of places. According to a government spokesperson, a total of 1,863 sarpanches, and 22,200 panches, were elected unopposed after the last day of withdrawal of nomination papers ended on December 23. These have only added to the public interest in these polls. After all, there are still 1,04,027 candidates waiting to face the village level voters, for a total of 13,276 panchayats.

A total of 2,10,494 nominations had been filed for panchayat elections, with 48,111 for the post of village sarpanches, and the remaining for the panches. There are a total of over 1.27 crore registered voters in the state for these elections. The state election commission has set up 17,268 polling booths, and 86,340 police and civil personnel will be deputed on election duty.

The excise department that oversees the flow of liquor—both country-made and Indian-made foreign liquor (IMFL)—is said to be the most hard pressed, as liquor flows freely at this time. A team constituted to contain illicit liquor in the state recently discovered that alcohol meant only for sale in the neighbouring states were flown into Punjab, courtesy the elections.

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